John Swinburn

Chrestomathy. I was introduced to the word yesterday, thanks to Word Genius, which occasionally attempts to improve my vocabulary. A.Word.a.Day, by Wordsmith, highlighted the word in January this year, but I missed it. And forreadingaddicts.co.uk called attention to it in June, but I was unaware of that until this morning. Apparently, the word has attracted quite a bit of interest this year, for reasons that remain unclear to me. The definition of the word is as follows, according to Word Genius: “A selection of passages from an author or authors, designed to help in learning a language.” The correct pronunciation is [kreh-STAH-mə-thee], in case you were wondering. And the etymology of the word, again according to Word Genius, is as follows: Chrestomathy can be traced back to the Greek words “khrēstos,” which means “useful,” and “matheia,” which means “learning.”

+++

After a very long day, and several attempts to reach her after 7:30 last night, I received a phone call from my wife around 9:00. Her voice was weak; almost too weak to understand. I did understand when she said she did not have therapy yesterday. She said she “ate and slept” during the day. I hope she ate more than she has been eating of late. According to the nurse with whom I spoke in the morning, my wife was to be evaluated by the therapists to determine what therapy she needs. I will attempt to speak with therapists today. And I will attempt to speak with the facility administrator, if there is one, to inquire as to why there is only one phone line into the building and why it rang 50 times last night without being answered. I am quickly becoming a fierce critic of rehabilitation facilities geared toward older patients.

+++

I have decided it is time to sell the 2002 Toyota Camry. It needs a good cleaning before I attempt to sell it, but otherwise it needs nothing that I know of. Obviously, we do not need two cars at the moment. We may never need two cars again. If we do, we can deal with that when the time comes. In the interim, I would rather not pay for insurance and upkeep on a car that is not being driven. It’s hard to believe we’ve had that car for almost 19 years; maybe longer, actually. I don’t remember whether we bought it in 2002 or the year before. I am sure, though, we’ve owned that car longer than we’ve owned any other. It doesn’t look quite new, but it’s in remarkably good shape (in my opinion) for a car that’s been on the road that long. The unfortunate reality is that it will not fetch anything like what it’s worth (in the real world); in the world of auto trading, it will get what someone is willing to pay. I’d almost rather give it to someone who needs a car, but we could use the money, given expenses we are incurring. The question, of course, is when I will get around to cleaning it up and deciding how to market it. Lethargy and sloth are not my friends.

+++

Last night, as I was watching an episode of the third season of Bordertown, I paid close attention to the house occupied by the series’ main character, Kari Sarjonen. I paid attention, too, to the furnishings. The architecture is quite modern; lots of glass and stone—straight lines without frills, the sort of architecture I prefer. And the contents, too, were reminiscent of mid-century modern, updated to reflect the latest finishes and materials. And I found the appliances and fixtures intriguing. If Sarjonen’s house is even remotely typical of Finnish housing, I could easily find life in Finland quite appealing, save for the bitterly cold winters and snow. But even the snow, as shown in the series, is pristine white and glistening; nothing like the gritty, dirty snow on the streets of Chicago two hours after it falls. Or, for that matter, the gritty, dirty snow on the streets of the Village. Back when it snowed in the Village. Before the climate transformed Arkansas into a near-tropical winterland. Back to the character of Finland; I want to go there and experience the place for myself. Without COVID-19. And without political intrigue involving Russia. And without neighboring Scandinavian countries morphing into right-wing immigrant-hating cesspools.

+++

Caustic. That’s my mood at the moment. Maybe that’s my mood most moments. I seem to cycle between caustic and mellow, with mellow becoming less and less common. A thirty day hibernation might correct that.

+++

Showering and shaving should be more inviting. They’re becoming more and more like work, for some reason. I’d like to be able to snap my fingers and be clean and close-shaven. No such luck. I have to take the soap and water and foam and sharp blade route. I might as well get to it and get it over with.

My wife was transported to her temporary home yesterday afternoon; she is in the rehab wing of a nursing and rehabilitation center about mid-way between town and the Village. I spoke to her briefly last night; she seemed comfortable in her new surroundings. It’s my understanding that I will be able to see her through a window in her room. I’ll verify that soon. And I’ll put Google Duo (and my wife’s willingness to use it) to the test. The first step for her, I think, will be to eat enough to begin to rebuild her strength; it’s impossible to regain strength without adequate fuel.

+++

After a rather long day yesterday, I was visited by an angel. A friend from church had offered to bring soup to me yesterday and, though I have been feeding myself reasonably well, I accepted the offer. Because I got home considerably later than I had expected, I called and suggested I would be happy to wait to get it until today. She insisted she would bring it by. And I am so very glad she did! It was among the best soups I have ever had. I had envisioned a thick soup  of ground beef and cannellini beans. Instead, it was a delightfully spicy mix of chicken (or was it turkey? I am poultry-knowledge-deficient), garbanzos, and green chiles. And she brought marvelous toasted bread as an accompaniment. I could not have asked for a more perfect meal yesterday. And, to think, I was prepared to be satisfied with a frozen dinner or soup from a can. That meal put me in a much better frame of mind. I hope I can get the recipe.

A week or so ago, another friend dropped by to deliver something I asked her to get for me when I learned she was planning to go to Trade Joe’s in Little Rock. In addition to the requested bag of elote-flavored chips, she came with a bag full of surprise goodies including a sampling of Spanish cheeses and an assortment of antipastos. And, a few days ago, I was the happy recipient of a mango and some persimmons, gifts from a couple of other friends (apparently, my love of food is obvious to those around me).

I feel incredibly fortunate to have found a community of good-hearted people. I’ve lived almost my entire life wondering whether people are, at their core, caring and altruistic or self-involved and selfish. Until I found this cluster of genuinely good people, I leaned toward thinking the latter. But, now, I think I may have been purposely distant, hence my skepticism.  I wonder how many other good people I may have been keeping at arm’s length all these years.

+++

A word popped into my head this morning and refuses to leave: constabulary. I cannot think of a recent occasion when the word was used, either in my personal experience or on television, so I have no idea about its source in my brain. I do not recall ever having used the word, either.

+++

I fell asleep during a phone conversation with a friend last night. I suspect my napping was helped along by a glass of wine, but I think the primary culprit for my nodding off was an overwhelming sense of being thoroughly tired. When I awoke before 4 yesterday, my energy was already at a low ebb. Focusing, as I was, on getting approval for my wife’s admission into another rehab facility had the effect of draining me even more. After awaking from my telephone nap last night, I decided to go to bed early again. I was in bed before 9. This morning, I got up about a quarter to 5 and felt generally rested, though in need of a neck and shoulder massage. I got more sleep last night than is typical for me, which might explain the aching need for a professional masseuse. But I think I slept at an odd angle, which also might explain the aches.

+++

Stacks of receipts, financial paperwork, medical paperwork, etc., etc. have been piling up ever since my wife came home from the old rehab center. The routine I had developed during her absence disappeared with the presence of home care people scurrying around the house. It’s now time for me to catch up on the work I let slip when she was at home and continued to let slide during her stay in the hospital, where I visited her every day. I will give myself a day to relax and be utterly indolent, then I will dive into the delayed paperwork.  Somewhere along the line I also will attempt to get the illusive haircut (I’ve been promising myself for many, many days that I would get a haircut, only to break that promise repeatedly). It reached the point that I attempted to trim the hair over my ears; I discovered (again) that is an unwise endeavor. Soon, though, all these delayed engagements will be tackled. I need to recapture the pattern of productivity.

+++

It’s 6:30. Time to think about breakfast. I wish I had saved some of last night’s soup. That would have made an ideal breakfast, just as it made an ideal dinner.

The hospital was ready to discharge my wife yesterday, but the rehab facility we chose was unable or unwilling to accept her. So, we’re waiting on word from another one. I hope we get word early today. The difficulty in making the decision to go to another rehab facility is that, unlike the hospital, those facilities do not allow visitors. That’s a distinct danger, I think; the isolation has real potential to cause or exacerbate depression. Yesterday, I asked my wife to promise to call me every day and to answer my calls every day. She agreed, but it’s easier to say than to engage the discipline necessary for her to do it. I need an ally inside the facility, someone who will make it their mission to ensure daily communication between us. That will be my mission; finding that person and getting a commitment.

+++

Despite going to bed early again last night and getting up early today, my energy level lags behind where I hoped it would be. I can imagine going back to bed and staying there for several hours. But I can’t do that. I have to go to the hospital to await news of my wife’s rehab destination. The sky, though clear and muted blue, appears drab and somber. Morning light is tinged with a dull hint of darkness, as if a filter is blocking out certain rays of the sun; the ones that spark smiles and glad spirits. Nature has billions of ways to shape one’s moods. Every single shred of the spectrum of color is at Nature’s beck and call; the most accomplished painter is not enough of an artist to compete with Nature’s sophistication and complexity.

It occurred to me just now that Nature has the capacity to create storms without clouds and without rain or wind and without any hint of dynamic air movement or lightning or sounds. Nature can create storms of dull silence, hidden between ordinary molecules. Today seems like one of those invisible storms. Chaos hidden and disguised to appear placid and gentle, but full of unchecked rage. Anarchy in the atmosphere, concealed by artificial tranquility.

Humans get our cues from Nature. Our façades can appear gentle and serene, hiding cauldrons of volcanic pandemonium just beneath the surface. Conversely, we can falsely appear tightly wound and ready to explode into a raging fury, while experiencing supreme calmness within. “Looks can be deceiving.”  “You can’t judge a book by its cover.” There must be more. I’m just unable to think of them.

+++

It is possible to be so tightly wound for so long that the acidic atmosphere inside our brains causes the coils to corrode. They snap but do not immediately come unwound. When the corrosion wears and weakens, though, shattered pieces of pent-up energy spray in all directions, like shrapnel meant to cause maximum trauma. I do not know this to be factual, of course, but I sense that it is a true reflection of what can and sometimes does happen. The worn and weakened coils, when they fracture, illustrate what we mean when we say someone is “broken.” The pieces a person has tried to control have taken on unruly lives of their own, bursting forth in an uncontrolled flash, tearing into everything and everyone in their paths.

+++

My mood this morning could be lighter and brighter. It could be less sinister and more cheerful. I will try to sparkle a bit. Not so much like broken glass, but like polished costume jewelry.

Yesterday, as usual, the television in my wife’s hospital room was tuned to The Food Network while she drifted in and out of sleep. And, as usual, I divided my time between the harder-than-I-would-like-sofa and the not-as-bad recliner/sleeper positioned so it can operate as neither; it functions only as a chair.

When I was ready to leave for the day, as the afternoon was nearing four o’clock, my wife asked me to lean in so she could tell me something (her voice is extremely weak at the moment). She told me she thought she experienced a hallucination sometime earlier in the day. I inquired for details. She explained she thought she was at a Willie Nelson concert and he was playing music from The Muppets. The idea that she was having hallucinations concerned her quite a bit. She’d had similar concerns a day or two earlier. I asked why she thought it was a hallucination and not just a dream. She wasn’t sure. It was a vague sense, she said.

“I wouldn’t worry about it,” I told her. “I suspect it was just a dream. Even if not, you’re taking so many medications it wouldn’t surprise me to learn some of them might interact to cause vague hallucinations.”

Then, she mentioned that Willie Nelson was singing Rainbow Connection. That triggered my own vague memory. Sometime during the day, while my eyes were closed, I heard a country-style vocal of Rainbow Connection.

“It wasn’t a dream! While I was drifting in and out of sleep, I heard someone on television singing that! You weren’t hallucinating. You just heard the music while you were half-asleep. It wasn’t Willie Nelson, but it was a country singer.”

And that settled that. But I kept thinking, all night, that maybe Willie Nelson had, in fact, recorded Rainbow Connection. This morning, after I showered, shaved, had my coffee, and took care of some financial matters, I searched for “Willie Nelson” and “Rainbow Connection.”  And here’s one of the several hits I found:

I was certain my wife was not hallucinating. And I was certain she had not heard Willie Nelson. But certainty was improper in one of those determinations. I will show my wife the video today. I hope it makes her smile.

Finally, I spoke to a couple of doctors yesterday. One was a hospitalist (I think) whose demeanor was more like a patient care technician; soft-spoken, compassionate, and caring. I thought she came into the room to get water for my wife and ask whether her pillows needed adjustment. But she was the rare physician who engaged fully as an equal. The other was a palliative care physician who, similarly, was an engaging listener and who seemed equally as caring and concerned. Both spent more time with us than I am used to spending with doctors, especially in a hospital setting.

I learned yesterday that my wife’s medical condition has sufficiently stabilized that the doctors think she should be ready for discharge within the next few days; perhaps as early as today or tomorrow, depending on plans for where she will go upon discharge. We were told she will need 24/7 care for the immediate future and, depending on progress, for much longer. After listening to the palliative care doctor speak about options, my wife said she wants to go to a rehabilitation center to try to recover her strength before going home. She will not return to Good Sam; both of us were firm about that. Not knowing much about any other facilities, we opted to ask the social worker to explore a newer (within the last two or three years) facility about ten or twelve miles outside the Village. Like other skilled nursing and rehab facilities, patient visits are not permitted due to COVID-19, but I told my wife I would insist she learn to use an app on her phone that will allow us to see and speak to one another daily.  So, we wait until we know more about next steps.

+++

I remain convinced that nursing and rehabilitation facilities, under COVID-19 rules, are being forced to engage in dangerous practices that are injurious to their patients. Those practices keep patients socially isolated and treat them like unruly prisoners forced to spend time in solitary confinement. Some facilities are making what seem to me to be half-hearted efforts to overcome isolation by allowing rather rare “window” visits and video visits, but they are not exploring truly creative ways of allowing patients really meaningful contacts with other human beings.

I remember, years ago, learning about the “boy in the bubble” whose immune system was utterly compromised so he could have no physical contact with other people and who had to be kept in a sterile environment. Paul Simon wrote a song about the child, Boy in the Bubble, in the mid-1980s. As I recall, the hospital/doctors/scientists created a sterile bubble environment that enabled the child to experience at least some of the joys of childhood while being kept safe from harmful germs. Sadly, the boy died before he reached his teenage years, but use of his blood cells led to treatments that saved other children from his sad fate. NASA engineers, I think, were involved in creating the environment that allowed the boy to live an admittedly unnatural but as-close-to-natural experience as possible for several years. Given the horrors of COVID-19 and its impact on the mental health of people who must be kept in isolation, I think the same creativity used to enable the boy to live for years should be brought to bear to protect the sanity and well-being of people in nursing and rehab facilities.

Our country’s culture has changed dramatically since that time, though. That was a time when we took enormous pride in accomplishing the impossible, the costs be damned. Today, it seems to me cost-benefit analyses replace immeasurable compassion in so many aspects of our lives. It’s depressing to think we might dismiss the idea of spending a few million dollars that could improve or save the lives of so many people because “it’s not worth the expenditure.” What a hideous attitude.

+++

My energy this morning is at a low ebb this morning. Regardless, I need to get to the hospital before too long, just in case they sped through the process of rehab placement. And I have to go to the post office soon after it opens, as well. A package I took to the P.O. to “refuse delivery” apparently got put back in the system; I had a notice in my mailbox yesterday that a package from the company was being held at the P.O. because I owe $13+ in postage. Ach! Why aren’t the simple things simpler?!

Until this morning, the term “anxiety attack” was etched into my consciousness. But it occurred to me moments ago that it’s called “panic attack.” Right? Whatever the term, until  yesterday, I had heard of them but, as far as I know, I had never experienced one. And that may still be true, but an experience yesterday morning convinced me I had one (and I’m pretty confident of it).

The morning was flowing along relatively smoothly, except for periodic flutters of worry about my wife; wishing I could talk to her to ask how she was feeling, but not wanting to call and wake her, if she was sleeping. Finally, around 9:30 I left the house  to visit her in the hospital. About a block from the house, waves of sensations sweep over me: heartburn, lightheadedness, heaviness in my arms, aching jaws, and a sense of fear or dread or…something. The sensations scared me; I thought for a moment I might be having a heart attack. But I doubted that aching jaws and lightheadedness and vague fears were symptomatic of a heart attack. I decided to ignore them and keep driving. But after driving another block or so, the symptoms continued and seemed to get stronger, so I made a circle and headed for home.

By the time I got the car into my garage, I felt like I might pass out. I thought about calling 911, but something prompted me to just sit in the car and rest. After two or three minutes, the symptoms had all but disappeared. I got out of the car, went into the house, and grabbed some Tums. Another couple of minutes and I was fine; no more sensations at all. I decided my experience was my first and only anxiety/panic attack. I am not sure what convinced me that’s what it was, but it seemed logical to me. I had been under stress, I had been worried, and I had allowed all sorts of issues to claw at me; it was anxiety, distilled into a powerful potion.

A while after I got to the hospital (where I found my wife sleeping), I decided to send a text to a retired nurse friend to ask whether such symptoms were likely symptoms of an anxiety attack. Fortunately, she did not see the text until a few hours later; otherwise, I might have taken her advice and gone downstairs to the ER (she texted back that they were indicative of a heart attack and, then, almost immediately called me). By the time I had written my text, though, I had already decided it was nothing. By the time she got back to me by phone, I was certain of it. But after speaking with her, I decided it was not especially bright to have made the decision I made. Even though it would have been a false alarm, it would have been far wiser to have let medical professionals make the determination, rather than making it myself. Lesson learned.

+++

Most of my four and a half hours at the hospital yesterday were spent in my wife’s dark room while she slept. She woke briefly to eat some yoghurt, drink some cranberry juice, take some pills, and ask to be repositioned on the bed; most of the time she slept while the Food Network attempted to entertain me.

During one brief interlude, a social worker peeked in and asked me to come chat. about plans for my wife, post-hospitalization. The outcome of the conversation was for her to commit to arranging a meeting for me with members of a hospice team, who will explain to me the pros and cons of hospice care. The social worker has no idea how long my wife will be in the hospital; she said “the doctors wanted me to talk to you about your plans when your wife is released.” She suggested a nursing facility would be appropriate because “she will need 24/7 care.” I rejected that suggestion. My wife does not want to be in a nursing facility. She confirmed that to me a little later. And I have yet to speak to a doctor about my wife’s prognosis and whether she might regain enough strength to stand or move from a bed to a chair. Frankly, I do not think I will place my trust in doctors who have not, to date, taken the time to actually visit my wife (at least to my knowledge and hers), opting instead to make decisions on the basis of third-party reporting and machine-captured data.

+++

I came home to find my “yard guy” working on relocating a fifty-thousand ton pile of approximately 200 trillion leaves from the lot next to my house. He hauled them down the mountainside, where he deposited them into the forest. I suspect deer will wade into those leaves, disappearing completely until Spring, when rain will wash away their crypts, leaving only perfectly preserved skeletons. The piles are very, very deep.

+++

Finally, I finished the last couple of episodes of Deadwind. I mourn for the completion of the lengthy binge. I turned back to Bordertown, knowing that series, too, is nearing the end. I am forlorn. But my Mexican sister-in-law has recommended Hinterland, a British police drama, so I shall try that. She mentioned others: The Unforgotten, Vera, Shetland, Happy Valley, and DCI Banks. I’ve seen Happy Valley, but cannot find the others on Netflix. However, I found Forgotten, a Korean crime-drama involving a mysterious kidnapping, so I’ll add that to my list. And I’ll search Amazon Prime for the others; I rarely go to Amazon Prime, which is probably an unfortunate oversight. Apparently, I need escapist entertainment; things so remote from my life that they transport me to other countries to immerse myself in experiences unlike any I have ever had nor will ever have. It is not simply entertainment for me, I think. It is a means of retaining my sanity by erasing my worries, at least for a while.

+++

Still no haircut. But today may be the day.  I told my wife yesterday I would delay my visit until a bit later, hoping to be in her presence when she is more likely to be awake. So, I will try to time my departure from the house and my arrival at the hospital to allow me ample time to visit Happy Clips or whatever it’s called. For some reason, I suspect the chain haircut place will be more likely to insist on masks that the down-home barber shop I used to frequent. But I could be wrong, in which case I will turn around. I could cut my own hair with pinking shears, perhaps triggering people in these parts to want that unique local hairstyle, “the one the Village geezer created.” Delusions of insignificance.

+++

I am in the mood for a thick ribeye steak, grilled rare over mesquite embers and served with a side of slices of Beefsteak tomatoes and purple onions, alongside a generous helping of cold pickled asparagus, with a nice glass of cabernet sauvignon or malbec. I gladly would have that for breakfast. But I do not have the steak, the tomatoes, the onions, nor the asparagus. I don’t have adequate mesquite, either, so I may have to settle for cereal. I wonder whether malbec pairs well with bran flakes?

+++

Aljazeera online is reporting that: Moroccan troops are launching operations in the Western Sahara border zone; Ethiopia has appointed a new leader for the Tigray region amid reports of civilian massacres; Algerians approved a new constitution; and French troops killed the commander of an al-Qaeda-linked group in Mali. These are headline stories on Aljazeera, but they get little or no mention in U.S. media.  Nor is the 2020 Nagorno-Karabakh war, an armed conflict between Azerbaijan and the self-proclaimed Republic of Artsakh in the disputed region of Nagorno-Karabakh. Until this morning, I knew virtually nothing of these very consequential events because I had not taken the time to take a break from the highly filtered reporting to which we are exposed in U.S. media and to look, instead, at some of the news other people around the world consume. It frustrates me that we think the media keeps us informed; the media keeps us aware of a narrow band of news the media judges of sufficient interest and importance to share with us. I applaud the media as far as it goes, generally; but I give U.S. media low marks on keeping us informed about the world outside our insulated bubble.

+++

I will approach the remainder of this day with a positive attitude. That is the best I can do. I hope it pays dividends.

This morning, when daylight begins creeping over the horizon and sunlight touches the treetops, I will drive to the car wash and give the Subaru a bath. The exterior, at least, will then be sufficiently clean to be presentable. The removal of a million bug splatters, from tiny through small and with a few large ones thrown in, will change the appearance of the car. I suspect removing the remains of bug corpses will reduce the car’s weight and improve gas mileage. And I will be able to see through the windshield. If I had the energy and discipline, I would clean the inside of the windows; but I have neither, so I will just deal with the reduced vision that comes along with windows coated with breath film.

After the cleansing, I may stop in at Walmart, if the store is open by then, and pick up some eggs. Somehow, I let the egg supply dwindle to dangerously low levels. I’m sure I could use plenty of other groceries, but I’ve been worse than lax about keeping track of what I’m using up. A more complete list will require more focus than I am willing to give to the task at the moment. Laziness fills every empty space in my head of late; that must stop.

I’ve made a deliberate decision about this morning’s ritual; I will not shave today. It requires too much attention and too much effort. I need that effort and attention to go toward washing the car and buying eggs. There’s only so much to spend. I think I will wash my hair, though. My beard is thin enough and grows slowly enough that a day without shaving is noticeable only to me and to anyone touching my face and neck. People rarely touch my face and neck, so there’s not much danger of my beard being noticed. My hair, on the other hand, needs its daily shampoo. If I skip that important activity for just a day, my hair looks like it has not been in touch with shampoo for several weeks. Not a pretty sight.

After getting the car washed and buying the eggs, I will return home for a while to have more coffee. My sister-in-law, whose coffee maker abruptly quit working earlier this week, will come for her morning cup of coffee and we will discuss the latest about her sister/my wife. And, then, I will head in to Hot Springs. My first stop may be at Happy Clips or whatever the haircut chain near Lowe’s is called, assuming I can get in without a wait. If not, I will take my unkempt head of hair to the hospital , where I’ll visit with my wife. If I can get a quick haircut, I’ll surprise my wife with a new, nicely-trimmed, look. And then I’ll let the day take me where it will.

My mood this morning is not awash in flippancy, despite the style of writing I’m employed in this post thus far. As forecast yesterday afternoon, I did not sleep at all well last night. I think I set a record for pee-break-interrupted-sleep. And I checked the clock roughly every fifteen minutes to see whether it was time to get up. Finally, at 5, I decided it was time to get up. At 4, I refused to get up, insisting to myself that I would, by God, get an hour of sleep before rising. I did not get that sleep. But I made note of the absence of sleep at 4:15, 4:30, and 4:45. Like clockwork. Haha. I suspect I may fall asleep in the chair in my wife’s hospital room, mirroring her naps during the day.

Hmm. Maybe I can tolerate unwashed hair for just a day. Perhaps I can tolerate the judgment of the washed and preened masses. Maybe I can endure their disapproving stares as they conclude I must be just another derelict; a sorry vagrant whose value can be measured in worn pennies.

Off I go.

Time got away from me this morning. I had planned on going to the hospital to visit my wife much earlier, but did not get there until about 10:40. She was asleep when I arrived and I had to work hard to wake her. That was an unwise move; she was not happy to have her sleep interrupted. After a few attempts to understand her very weak voice, I got the message; she was displeased with me for failing to listen to her admonitions to stop asking her how she was doing. That, despite the fact that I asked only once. I let her go back to sleep for about an hour and a half, when the nurse came in to transfuse a unit of blood into her arm. The explanation, the nurse said, was that my wife’s red blood count was very low. That, she further explained, can cause extreme tiredness, confusion, and other symptoms that generally spell discomfort. I left the room while the nurse was orchestrating the transfusion, opting to go downstairs and get lunch in the cafeteria.

A while later, the tech arrived with food—finely diced roast beef awash in gravy, along with whipped potatoes and diced cooked carrots. My wife loathes cooked carrots; after the tech learned this from me, and my wife, she swept them to the side of the plate. The tech then spent twenty minutes or so feeding my wife roast beef and potatoes, until my wife said she had eaten enough. After a while, my wife engaged me in a bit of conversation before she asked to have a tech come adjust her in bed so she could be more comfortable. We chatted just a bit more before sleep overtook her again, after brief periods of watching some shows on the Food Network. I woke my napping but not sleeping wife around 4:00 p.m. to tell her I was going home. Before I left, though, I put the newspapers, magazines, and Sudoku puzzle book on her overbed table, within reach and wished her good night. “Call me anytime you’d like,” I told her. I told her I would not try to call her, though, to avoid waking her. She appreciates being left uninterrupted; she received my assurance well.

When I got home, I had a message from the social worker at the hospital. I assume she wants to talk to me about what my plans are when my wife is discharged from the hospital, an eventuality whose time frame is completely unknown to me. I tried to call her, but it was nearing 5:00 p.m. and I got her voice mail. I expect to talk to her tomorrow.

My wife was much more alert and awake yesterday and the day before than today; today’s lethargy probably is due to her low red blood cell count. The nurse does not know the cause of the low blood count; they will continue to explore possibilities tonight and tomorrow, she suggested.

I know already I will not sleep especially well tonight. Leaving the hospital with concerns about my wife’s extreme tiredness and her inexplicably low red blood cell count is sure to translate into insomnia or, at the very least, anxiety-ridden shallow sleep. Perhaps a gin and tonic or three will remedy that prospect.

The plan today was to buy gasoline, get a haircut, wash the car, and visit the grocery store. What the hell was I thinking? How could I possibly do those things and also spend several hours at the  hospital? Not impossible, but I felt—and feel—thoroughly worn out when I got home; in no mood to go grocery shopping, stop for gas, or get the car washed. I will ask Alexa to remind me early tomorrow to go do my errands before I stumble into the day. Someone stumbling upon this post might assume Alexa is my mistress. No, I do not have a mistress at present. Does that statement convey sufficient ambiguity, enough to cause tongues to wag and faces to flush?

This morning, I allowed myself to think my wife’s improvement upon moving from the ICU to a standard room on a regular hospital floor was the beginning of what could be a complete recovery or, at least, a recovery that will allow her to leave her bed and spend enjoyable and productive time in her wheelchair. But I do not know what to think today. I do not know if I dare get my hopes up. On the other hand, I do not want pessimism to interfere with progress. Sitting here in my house, alone with my thoughts, I feel isolated and distant from everyone. As lonely as that is, I think I’d rather be lonely than feel obligated to engage in conversation with anyone. The middle ground, the physical presence of a person who does not feel compelled to talk to me or to hear me talk, would be ideal. I suppose that’s why some people find blow-up dolls appealing. As weird as it is, perhaps they see that artificial human as a surrogate who does not require anything from the human “companion,” but who offers some strange form of solace to that companion. Here I am again, psychoanalyzing people I do not know, have never met, and about whom I know virtually nothing. Why do I not feel more embarrassed than I do to intrude on lives that do not need me to invade them?

One gin and tonic down. More to follow.

Is there a term for the inability to remember any details of a precise recent memory of a long-buried recollection? Yesterday, and again today, on two separate occasions, two different flashes of memory from my childhood popped into my head. Both occurrences involved events or emotions I feel quite certain I had not thought about in fifty or sixty years; maybe more. And both were crystal clear for several seconds. Yet, almost as soon as I recognized them as real—legitimate snapshots of fleeting moments in my life—they were gone, leaving only a deep imprint in my brain of the absence of a clear memory. I know only that those memories were real; but I do not know what they were about. I do know, though, they did not involve life-changing events; they simply cataloged moments of experience. They were neither especially relevant nor particularly irrelevant. The experiences were like sorting through a huge box of old photos and seeing a couple of pictures that expressed the mundane reality of an unimportant activity; like a photo of a child sitting on a swing set or standing proudly next to a misshapen sand castle on a stretch of empty beach.

Even though I am confident the two images that flashed through my mind were, indeed, mundane and not otherwise meaningful, I think they expressed to me something profound about my early life. And maybe, if only I could remember them, they would help explain who I am today. Those two concepts are at odds with one another; I know that. How could a fleeting memory of a meaningless experience have such a potentially profound impact on one’s personality and/or the way one’s life has played out over five or six decades?

How, indeed. Maybe I’m making far more of what may be only a misfiring synapse than it deserves. Maybe that’s all those memories were; misdirected nerve impulses that ricochet off of artificial memories. Artificial memories do exist; I’ve had more than my share of them. I remember events that never happened—could never have happened. These memories are similar in many respects to déjà vu. According to an article in Scientific American, déjà vu might be explained like this:  “We encounter a situation that is similar to an actual memory but we can’t fully recall that memory. So our brain recognizes the similarities between our current experience and one in the past. We’re left with a feeling of familiarity that we can’t quite place.” Perhaps that sort of error in memory processing can explain my two strange “memories” from my childhood. Or, perhaps not.

+++

I spent four and a half hours with my wife yesterday, helping her eat some “thickened” chicken broth and some vanilla-flavored Greek yoghurt. The pureed chicken breast and whipped potatoes she asked me to order went untouched. In fact, she claimed she did not ask me to order them; but when, after the order-taker on the other end of the telephone asked me whether my wife wanted gravy, my wife responded to me that she did. I hope a more appealing meal appeared after I departed. I thought I had to leave by 3:30 in order to get to return a “wedge” (used to help position bedridden people to avoid bed sores)  to the Village Health Mart; as it turned out, the wedge had to go to the pharmacy, not the medical supplies store. Long, convoluted, uninteresting story. At least I got it returned and, if all goes according to plan, will see a $46 credit on the credit card I used for the purchase. (I bought two; only needed on…a smaller one, at that.)

+++

Despite promising myself I would make congee today, I did not. Instead, I made a chicken and rice dish last night, using the Instant-Pot. I ate more chicken and more rice last night than I should eat in three days; apparently, I was ravenously hungry. I have had only coffee this morning. That probably will suffice; I’m still digesting from last night’s glutton-fest. I ate while I watched another episode of Deadwind. I’m beginning to understand a few words in Finnish. Give me another season or two and I may be able to successfully converse with the locals after I move to Helsinki. I think I might enjoy a job as a Finnish homicide detective. This assumes, of course, the television series portrays (like American television) absolutely realistic experiences.

+++

I took a pause from writing to shower and shave, take the trash to the street, and drive to the post office to pick up several pieces of mail. Most of the mail was marketing materials of no interest to me. When I got back to the house, my sister-in-law came by to borrow nutcrackers and to have a cup of coffee. Her coffee maker died. Until a replacement arrives later this week, she will rely on me for a cup each morning. She says the replacement is orange (she could have chosen teal or one of a couple of other colors). The one she bought has no water reservoir; it produces a single serving based on the amount of water one pours into the machine. And that exhausts my knowledge of her replacement coffee maker, soon to arrive.

+++

If the universe is properly aligned today, I will get a haircut before the day is out. First, I will go to the hospital to visit my wife and will take the magazines, etc. I promised to take yesterday, but left on the kitchen island, instead. When I returned home yesterday, I put them on the passenger seat; I wish I could set a reminder to myself to pick them up and take them inside once I arrive at the hospital. I do not trust myself to think clearly enough to ensure I take them inside. Whether I get a haircut today or not does not matter a great deal. I can live with my shaggy, unkempt look for a while longer. If my hair becomes sufficiently annoying, I am capable of using scissors to remove the offending strands, stopping them from dangling in my eyes and tickling my forehead.

+++

The sky is brilliant blue this morning and the temperature is just a tad over fifty degrees. A long sleeve shirt, sleeves rolled up a bit, over a t-shirt is adequate to keep me comfortable.  It’s almost a quarter after nine, five hours into the day. I should have accomplished more thus far this morning. But what do I really need to do? The house needs cleaning. That will wait, though. It will still be here—ready for vacuums and mops and other implements of housekeeping—when I return. Whether my mood will support the need to do housekeeping remains to be seen.  Off to face the day.

After six nights in ICU, and just after I arrived at the beginning of ICU visiting hours, nurses transferred my wife to a regular floor yesterday afternoon. Her blood pressure had stabilized enough, without the aid of IV medications, for the hospitalist (I assume) to judge her safe to remove from 24/7 close monitoring.

The process of readying her for the transfer was fairly lengthy, involving the removal of heart monitor lead wires from her. It also involved the extraction of a main line (the entry point for multiple IV drip lines) from her neck, among other wires and tubes tethering her to monitoring devices and sources of medication delivery. After she settled into her new—much quieter—room, she was able to order some food and drink, though not precisely what she wanted. Her diet is, for the moment, restricted to pureed foods and thickened liquids. The reason is that the muscles for swallowing have become weakened; until they regain adequate strength, she had a very difficult time chewing and swallowing food. So, for now, she can get roast beef, ham, beef patties, turkey, and other meats, but they are in the form of purees. And her cold tea comes, thickened, in a sealed container in response to the aphagia. I hope that affliction is short-lived.

I stayed with her well beyond my intended departure at 4:30, leaving around 6 or thereabouts. She watched a rather interesting baking competition program on the Food Network, apparently enjoying the efforts of contestants to create complex Christmas cookies and such stuff. We talked a bit, too, though I still have a hard time hearing her, because her voice is so weak.

Last night, as I was watching another episode of Deadwind (I’m taking a break from Bordertown), the land line rang. It was my wife, calling on her cell phone; a truly happy and unexpected event! As far as I know, she has not used her phone at all the entire six days she has been in the hospital (I took it to her a couple of days after her admission to the ICU), so it was a pleasant surprise to hear from her last night. She said she would call me this morning to let me know when she wants me to come visit (regular visiting hours are considerably longer than the hours available for ICU visits). And she wants me to bring some reading materials and her sudoku puzzle book. I hope this sudden burst of energy and interest portends the start of a strong recovery. Crossing my fingers.

+++

The only downside of hospital visits these past six days has been the inability (and lack of energy) to plan nutritious meals for myself. I have not wanted to thaw food that I have neither the time or the energy to prepare when I get home, so I’ve been winging it. The pasta night before last was fine, but otherwise my meals have been either snacks or one-component dinners, like last night (a quick-thawed cube steak cooked rare on the stovetop). Several members of my church had planned a “meal train” which involves preparing and delivering a full meal several times a week, but my wife’s sudden trip to the ICU derailed that train (I should be punished for that) for obvious reasons. People still want to help, but uncertainty about when I will be home, among other things, makes food preparation and delivery impossible to plan. That notwithstanding, I need to get in the habit of organizing quick and simple-to-prepare and nutritious meals for myself. It’s not hard; I just have to get in gear and do it. A single short trip to the grocery store will enable me to get all I need. I think today is the day for that trip. So, it is done; the plan is in place.

+++

One of the episodes of Deadwind last night introduced me to a phrase and a concept I find fascinating. The episode’s title is Whisper of the Stars. The phrase, in the context of the Finnish series, is an awfully macabre one, but its origin is not. A book of the same title, by Janine Scott, addresses the phenomenon. An article from Wall Street International Magazine has this to say about the experience, in relation to an exhibition held in 2014 at the Horniman Museum and Gardens in Forest Hill, London.:

The name of the exhibition, Whisper of the Stars, comes from Sakha Republic (Yakutia) in Eastern Siberia, where the extreme winter cold creates a strange phenomenon. When the temperature drops below the mid minus-50s Celsius, a soft whooshing sound can sometimes be heard, like rice or grain being poured. This noise is caused by the moisture in one’s own exhaled breath turning to ice crystals in the cold dry air. The native Yakut people call this the whisper of the stars.

The phrase, quite apart from the phenomenon it describes, appeals to me. For me, it conjures ideas based not in physical realities but, instead, in magical dimensions beyond my understanding; the idea tests my certainty about the physical world, suggesting a connection between the universe beyond me and the world I see and experience daily. It’s almost mystical, which flies in the face of everything I believe. Odd, that.

+++

The word “whisper” has an odd appeal to me. I use it in such different ways, depending on context, but no matter the context, it has an inexplicable magnetism about it. Different words have had that same allure for me over the years. The words change; their draw ebbs and flows, but certain words seem to have an unusual charisma for me for a time. Eventually, their attraction fades, but for a while they occupy my mind and capture my attention in ways I cannot explain. I just find them attractive and thought-provoking. Whisper is such a word, for now. I’ll reserve the word to serve as a character name for a piece of fiction I will write one day. Whisper Kneeblood, perhaps. A relative of Calypso Kneeblood, the man I model after the man I sometimes wish I were. Maybe. Maybe not.

+++

Though I did not wake up as early this morning as I did yesterday, I was awake long before I got out of bed at 5, though “awake” might be stretching it; I was between dreams and fantasies and wakefulness. I distinctly remember noticing that I had left the light on in the master bedroom closet; I distinctly saw a shaft of light spilling from the vertical gap between the door and the frame. But when I actually got out of bed, intending to go turn out the light, the closet was dark. I flipped the switch to make sure the light had not burned out; it came on. The light had not been on, but I saw it quite clearly in my threshold consciousness. But, obviously, I did not see it at all. One’s mind can play convincing tricks on itself.

+++

Again, I wish I had made congee last night. I will add that to my to-do list for this evening; I hope to pay attention to it. I already feel the satisfaction of having a nice warm bowl of congee in t he morning. I’ll flavor it with ground pork, fried shallots, green onions, soy sauce, Sambal Oleek, and over-the-top amounts of freshly-grated ginger root. I could do it this morning, but I won’t, will I? No, I’ll probably poach an egg, instead. Or maybe soft-boil an egg. If I don’t get in gear, I’ll do nothing of the sort. So, enough finger pumping for this morning. On to tackle the day.

Whether the culprit was the 6.5-ounce can of minced clams, the remnants of the week-old half-can of diced tomatoes, or the similarly aged half can of tomato sauce that went into last night’s pasta sauce for dinner, I do not know. Or maybe it was the Italian spices or the crushed red peppers. Perhaps none of them deserve blame. Something, though, has been causing my stomach to growl and gurgle these last few hours, beginning sometime around 2:00 a.m. I finally gave up my attempts to get back to sleep around 4:30, when I arose to discover I had not organized my medications for the week. Rather than do the work then, I opted to put off taking my meds until I feel more fully awake and alert. So, I went in to the kitchen to make coffee. There, I realized my lethargy is not new; it began last night, when I casually rinsed my dinner dishes, rather than wash them. They waited for me in the sink, scolding me for being lazy last night and demanding I take action this morning. So, I washed the cookware and put the dinnerware in the dishwasher, punishment for failing to take appropriate action last night. I hate waking up to dirty dishes in the sink; I have only myself to blame.

Pasta takes far too long to cook. Twelve minutes can seem like twelve hours when one feels ravenously hungry and inexplicably exhausted. And the twelve minutes begins only after the water begins to boil, a process—from turning on the heat to reaching a rolling boil—that seems to last as long as adolescence. It’s a good thing I like my pasta al dente; if I liked it soft and slimy, I would still be waiting.  The right time to cook pasta, I think, is early in the day, long before one plans to eat it. Then, when it’s time for dinner, it can be popped into the microwave with a few splashes of water and, presto, it’s ready in a flash. At least that’s how I envision it. I don’t think I’ve ever reheated pasta; I tend to enjoy it cold, if it’s not freshly prepared.

Food was on my mind sometime during the night last night, either in my dreams or while I was battling my growling innards. I was wrestling with a decision on how to cook meat loaf; if I permitted it to spread out, it would not fit in the oven, but if I did not allow it to spread out, it would be too thick to cook throughout. I think it must have been a dream; it makes absolutely no sense. The night before, I was in a similar nonsensical situation; sitting in a rowboat in a placid body of water, viewing a glass and steel elevator at the water’s edge. I do not need irrational dreams to complicate my life; it is complex enough without them.

Last night when I got home from visiting my wife in the hospital, I was quite tired. Even though I stayed only three and a half hours, it seemed longer; probably because she was asleep most of the time and I simply sat at her bedside, occasionally reading or rereading email or just fidgeting. A nurse told me it’s possible my wife will be moved to a regular floor, out of ICU, today. That’s assuming her blood pressure remains in safe limits without IV medications. The nurse said my wife did not require the medications for most of the day yesterday, a good sign her sepsis is healing.

I took a container of watermelon balls to the hospital, hoping to give my wife something she would enjoy eating. When I got there, though, someone (a dietician?) was evaluating my wife’s swallowing, trying to figure out what causes her to cough when she is trying to eat or drink. The woman doing the evaluation told me my wife, for the time being, should eat only soft foods and liquids that had added texture until her aphagia has been addressed. My wife has grown so weak, she said, the muscles she uses to swallow have begun to atrophy; those muscles need to be strengthened before she can safely swallow food that must be chewed. Ach! My wife cannot get a break from all this!

The haircut I did not get several days ago still eludes me. Today, Monday, is a traditional rest day for barbers, so I will not get my haircut today, either. Tomorrow is iffy, in that I do not know what to expect from the hospital; the doctors may opt to release my wife, rather than keep her on the regular floors. I just don’t know. Better, then, not to make any plans; that way, I will not have to cancel them.

My fantasy life seems to be in odd bloom lately. Mostly, it plays out when I go to bed, before I go to sleep. I envision myself in a secluded and remote location, in a private lakeside house; the lake is private, too. It belongs to me. The architecture of the house combines mid-century modern with contemporary design. I feel safe and alone. A small dog keeps me company. I am lonely, but I cannot figure out why. I am not asleep during this fantasy, but not fully awake and aware, either. It repeats with some regularity, though the location varies slightly from time to time. And, on occasion, I interact with visitors, though I cannot recall who just now. Sometimes, in my fantasy, I work crossword puzzles. A day or so ago, one of the clues was “carefree.” I wrote “insouciant.” I think insouciance was a “Word of the Day” recently, so that explains that; it’s not a word I would have remembered from my own vocabulary. I probably will not remember the definition a month from now.

Lazy. That’s the way I feel at this moment. The idea of shaving and taking a shower does not appeal to me; too much effort is involved. But I will do it, nonetheless. I have to get it over with. First, I’ll have something for breakfast. I wish I had made congee last night; congee strikes my fancy this morning. But it takes too long and too much effort. So, I will have something simpler; like cereal or a banana or a protein bar, if I can find one. Lethargy. Laziness. Sloth. My photo appears beside each of those words in the New American Dictionary of Impoverished Emotions.  Enough. Absolutely enough.

It is true; anxiety has the capacity to sap one’s energy in much same way as insomnia and lack of rest can drain one’s stamina. One’s reserves of vitality and strength can bleed away, almost unnoticed, simply from anxiety. Both mental and physical energy are subject to anxiety’s power to siphon off vigor and intellectual acumen. We know these things from a cerebral perspective, but when we experience them, the knowledge sinks in. It tends to stick when the real world offers undeniable verification. A tangible example: last night, I began writing what would be today’s post, while the details were fresh. But instead of writing a little and then saving the draft to be finished this morning, I hit “Publish” instead of “Save Draft.” It’s a little thing, but it illustrates (for me, anyway) how anxiety or simple tiredness might lead to far more catastrophic outcomes. Think, for example, of an overtired Navy officer on a submarine, practicing responsibilities for launching retaliatory nuclear missiles in the event of an attack. That is, of course, an extreme, dramatic example, but it emphasizes how anxiety might result in horrendous unintended consequences.

As I ponder that awful scenario, another one—more plausible and more likely—comes to mind. A tired, overworked nurse, working a twelve-hour shift, administers the wrong medication or the wrong amount of the right medication to a patient. The outcome could be just as individually catastrophic, though on a smaller scale than one involving the launch of nuclear missiles.

The outcome of my simple mistake—publishing instead of saving a draft blog post—does not begin to compare to the horrible effects of my examples. But it illustrates the continuum of the impacts of anxiety (I’ll assign anxiety, more than overwork, as the cause of both awful events). I think the spectrum of anxiety is just as complex and just as long as the color spectrum. Much of human experience can be compared to the color spectrum; almost everything in our experience takes place in degrees, both in intensity of understanding and in impact.

I look back on what I’ve written and wonder if my words offer yet more evidence of the potential for anxiety to cause confusion or disorientation. Does any of what I’ve written make sense? Does it have any discernible purpose, other than to attempt to excuse my mistake in posting a draft instead of saving it? My mind is jumbled this morning. It was just as scrambled last night, as I watched an episode of Bordertown. I kept drifting off during critical scenes, springing awake after the fact, requiring me to replay several minutes of the program to get my bearings and understand what was happening. Finally, after completing the episode, I turned off the television and sat there, thinking about whether I wanted to start another one or go to bed. Ten or fifteen minutes later, I became aware that I had drifted off again while attempting to make my decision. This happened more than once. Finally, I called it a night and went to bed.

This morning, fog enshrouds my neighborhood. It’s impossible to say whether we’re simply covered with a cloud, while the air down the hills on all sides is clear, or whether it’s a foggy morning all the way around. My sister-in-law will be over shortly to borrow a stand mixer; she can tell me what the weather is like in the “lowlands.” In the meantime, I will force myself to look at online news. I do not know why I feel compelled to know what is going on in the world around me; I cannot control it. I cannot even react appropriately to it. But I think I should know. I’d rather watch the two woodpeckers outside my window; they either are engaged in battle or in a mating ritual. Whichever it is, it’s fascinating to watch. Maybe I’ll wait on the news.

Yesterday’s visit with Janine was shorter than the day before, despite my intent to boost her spirits with some of her favorite treats. I took watermelon, sherbet, and cranberry juice to her, but she was in no mood to consume them for the first three hours, when she opted to sleep, instead. Finally, she consented to have some watermelon, but only about half of what I had for her. And, then, she agreed to eat some sherbet; it had thawed, in spite of my best efforts with an insulated carrier and blue ice. Still, she had a few spoonsful of the melted goo before suggesting I dispose of the rest. I left the cranberry juice and two frozen containers of sherbet (given to the nurse immediately upon my arrival), which were labeled with Janine’s name and put in a fridge/freezer somewhere in the bowels of the ICU.  By 4:30, I decided it was rather pointless for me to stay, in that I would be sitting next to Janine while she slept, so I opted to head home while still daylight.

The nurse told me Janine had eaten virtually nothing again today. Janine says even the smell of food makes her cough. Neither the nurse nor I can understand that. Somehow, some way, I have to insist that she eat nourishing meals, at least enough to provide basic life-sustaining nutrition.

The postal carrier, day before yesterday, delivered an unpleasant surprise. Apparently, I somehow had missed an earlier notice, a few months ago, that property and personal taxes were due before October 15; the piece of mail bearing that news notified me of the oversight and informed me that I owed a delinquency penalty. Not much money, but too much, nonetheless. At any rate, yesterday morning I pulled out the checkbook, made copies of the tax notices, and headed to the tax collector’s office to pay my bill. I could have paid online, but the transaction fee was an absurd $57, which I refused to even consider paying.

At the tax collector’s office, I went inside to pay my bill, where a long line of people stood waiting to do the same thing. I stood in line for about twenty minutes, listening to an idiot in line behind me complain bitterly about the “socialism” of having to pay property taxes and his outrage at having to stand in line; if he were in charge, he said, he would “run things” far more efficiently. Just before my place in line reached the entrance to the office where taxes were to be paid, I reached for my checkbook. It was not there. I looked around me; no checkbook on the floor. “I must have left it in the car,” I said to myself, and left my precious place in line, knowing when I returned I would have to wait another twenty minutes or more to get to the place I lost. I went to my car and searched for the checkbook; I could not find it. “I must have left it at home,” I said, as I drove away, thirty-plus minutes away. When I got home, I parked in the driveway and conducted another thorough search. I found the checkbook, lodged between the console and the passenger seat. Apparently, it had slipped out of the console on a turn and found its way to its hiding place.

Angry with myself, I snarled and took the checkbook in the house. I called the tax collector’s office to verify that I could write a single check for both property and personal tax. Then, I completed the check, prepared a self-addressed and stamped envelope, and drove to the post office. I had opted not to do this earlier to save the cost of a certified, return-receipt-requested, letter. I was unwilling to make another trip to the tax collector’s office; I was, though, willing to pay the $6.95 fee to avoid making that trip. Bah!

My plan had been to go get a haircut after I paid the taxes. But, by the time I went through the process I just described, it was too late. I had just enough time to buy and eat a fast food lunch, then drive to the hospital, arriving just a few minutes after visiting hours began. My wife asked me, after I had been with her for two or three hours, to stay longer than I had originally planned (I intended to leave at 4:30). Of course I readily agreed; I left at about ten minutes before 7:00, the time visiting hours end.

Shortly after arriving my wife’s tiny room in the ICU, a nurse entered and told me I would need to don protective gear, consisting of a thin plastic/latex robe and nitrile gloves. She said my wife was in isolation because of her diagnosis of clostridioides difficile (C.Diff.). I did not bother to tell the nurse, who had not been there the two days before, I had not been asked by other nurses to wear the gear on those days, even though the diagnosis had been made on my wife’s arrival at the ER; I simply did as I was asked. The fact that two sets of medical professionals approached the reality of contagion in such different ways reminded me that medicine remains as much a human endeavor as a scientific one. As is true of so many aspects of our lives, context plays an enormous role in how we behave.

A few hours into my visit with my wife, she asked me to call her sister. That was among the only times my wife seemed truly engaged during the visit; it was good to see her at least modestly animated during the call. Afterward, though, she returned to what seemed to me a combination of exhaustion and sleep deprivation. Both she and the nurse told me she had not slept well the night before. She had thrown up shortly after being given one of her medications shortly after I had arrived, she said, and that experience robbed her of strength, as well. During my visit, she had another bout with the heaves; a nurse called a doctor, who prescribed an anti-nausea medication. The nurse said all the antibiotics my wife was being given could cause nausea.

By the time I left last night, my wife had told me things she would like me to try to bring to her today: watermelon, ice cream/sherbet, and cranberry juice. I have the first two at home; I will stop at the grocery store this morning to try to find the latter. The need to keep those items cold for the trip to the hospital rules out a trip to the barber shop again today. That’s all right, though; “urgency” and “haircuts” do not belong in the same thought bubble.

+++

The sky this morning is a gentle mix of cerulean blue and soft white. As I look up through the trees out the window, orange and gold leaves against the sky seem to define my sense of what Autumn should look like. The dappled light filtering through the thinning canopy of leaves reminds me of my favorite Japanese term, komorebi; English should adopt that word or create a new one that translates the Japanese concept precisely.

The forest floor is littered with millions of leaves, appearing collectively as an intricately textured sheet of light brown and tan. The spots where sunlight touches them are bright; in the absence of sunlight, the shadows hide the texture and reveal only dark, indistinguishable shapes. It’s interesting to me that, every morning, the ground and the rocky outcroppings look different; they are the same every day, but my eyes and my imagination change them, as if I am seeing a new view with each new dawn.

+++

I must go to the Post Office again this morning to return a package that was left at my door yesterday. I mistakenly ordered a box of size small latex gloves on Ebay; within seconds of realizing my error, I contacted the seller and asked that the sale be cancelled or replaced with a size large. Two days later, I received an email, telling me the shipment had already been processed and could not be recalled. I would have to refuse it, after which my payment would be refunded. So, I will ask the Post Office to take the package and return it to the sender. I should pay closer attention to what I am doing. I am allowing my distractedness to amplify my little annoyances.

+++

It just occurred to me why I feel such hunger this morning. I did not have a proper dinner last night. I opened a bag of Trader Joe’s elote-flavored corn chips when I got home last night and munched on a few of them, but did not take the time to prepare a meal. Instead, I plopped down in front of the television for another episode or two of Bordertown. At 10:30, I awoke on the couch in a state of confusion; I have no idea how long I had been asleep, but I think it may have been more than an hour. I’ll have to go back and find a scene I recognize from the series to know where to retrace my “viewing.” Before I do that, though, I’ll have a variation on breakfast and will experience another full day; no more television until the evening hours. For now, I’ll start working on the day ahead.

Last night or early this morning, several times when I was halfway between sleep and waking, I thought I heard the rumble of distant thunder. But the sky remains too dark to see storm clouds—if, in fact, they are present—even though pink and orange hues creep up into the southeastern horizon, shedding a little light on the edge of the morning.

If I wait a minute or two, the speed of the sunrise will provide an answer to my questions about the state of the sky; I’m impatient, though, so I write my thoughts without bothering to turn to look. Some days—today is one of them—I am too wrapped up in thought to simply observe the world around me. I make assumptions based on flimsy evidence, failing to use my powers of observation to verify or negate my theories. It occurs to me that almost all of us do that. We confuse opinions with facts, beliefs with unverified conclusions; when confronted with reality opposed to our positions, we bend and stretch our sensibilities to mirror our desired evidence. We create alternate environments; the sort of dimensions in which the properties of gravity and light obey our rules, not the laws of nature.

I would like to control reality. I want to bend steel with my mind. Restore strengths with my wishes. Cure illness with a sweep of my hand. Cleanse the air and water of pollutants with a nod of my head. Restore civility to public discourse with a glance. Eliminate poverty by willing it gone. Reality is laden with pain, both physical and mental. Pain cannot be extracted from reality because it is part of it. Like salt dissolved in water, pain becomes impossible to remove without a total transformation; only when the water evaporates can the salt be recaptured, but by then, the water is gone.

The shades on the windows raised, I now see a clear blue sky. No sign of clouds. No remnants of storms that might have produced thunder. So, maybe I was dreaming. Or maybe my thoughts ricocheted inside the emptiness in my skull, their echoes creating the illusion of the sound of thunder, sounds that rattled me partially awake.

+++

I visited my wife again yesterday in ICU. Yesterday was much like the day before. The doctors and nurses still were attempting to get her blood pressure to stay within normal limits without IV medications. Some success, but not enough to warrant moving her to a regular floor of the hospital; she needs more attention and closer monitoring than can be done on the regular floors. I learned that, in addition to hypotension, septic shock, and a urinary tract infection, her heart rhythm was not normal. In addition, I learned that she had Clostridium difficile infection or C.Diff, an intestinal infection she first had while she was in the rehabilitation facility; there is a question as to whether it is not a recurrence, but a continuation, of the infection she had before.  My wife should not have to face all of these health challenges; no one should, though. The nurse told me that infection does not require hospitalization, though, so when the other problems are under control, I should be able to bring her home; I will just have to administer to her even more pills than she takes now (the number I have been giving her each day is approximately twenty).  Ach! I asked her primary care doctor whether the number could be reduced; she said all of the pills are needed to address various issues.

I will go back to the ICU this afternoon at the beginning of visiting hours (unless I learn that she had been moved to a regular floor beforehand, in which case I will go earlier). Assuming I go the ICU, the probability is that I will spend most of my time watching my wife sleep, interrupted only by a short time trying to coax her to eat a fraction of the lunch left on her overbed table. But maybe, like yesterday, I can get her to watch a little television; yesterday, she watched portions of a couple of episodes of Bones. I don’t think I’ve ever watched that show; I found it more entertaining than waiting for my phone to alert me to incoming email.

+++

As usual, my evening last night was spent watching another couple of episodes of Bordertown. My immersion in the Finnish crime drama has prompted me toward a shallow exploration of the city in which the series is set: Lapeenranta (called Villmanstrand, in Swedish), Finland. Lapeenranta, located on the shores of Lake Saimaa (Europe’s fourth largest lake), is less than twenty miles from the Russian border and about 120 miles from St. Petersburg, Russia. The city’s population is roughly 72,000. According to Wikipedia, Lapeenranta is the second most-visited Finnish city, after Helsinki, by Russian tourists. Again according to Wikipedia, the city is the site of Lappeenranta University of Technology and Saimaa University of Applied Sciences which, together have approximately 13,000 students from 68 countries.  I wish I could upload an image of the city’s coat of arms, but WordPress is being uncooperative.

Watching television series and films set in other countries, especially in countries and cities generally unfamiliar to American audiences (at least to me), is an illuminating experience. I think Americans often think of other countries as being less advanced than the U.S.A. when, in fact, many of them are far more advanced in many respects than we are. A relatively small city (compared to most “major” American cities) like Lapeenranta is quite sophisticated and is a hub of commerce and tourism. I gather many shops include signs written in Cyrillic letters to encourage and welcome Russian tourists. The city actually is closer to St. Petersburg than to the capital, Helsinki, by a few miles. I’ve written before (I think) about our one-day excursion into Helsinki, following a conference in Stockholm. We took an overnight cruise ship from Stockholm to Helsinki, spent the day walking around the city, and then took the cruise ship back to Stockholm that night. Another one of our too-quick explorations of distant destinations.

+++

It’s nearing 7:30 and I haven’t even finished my first cup of coffee, now cold as ice. Still unshowered and unshaven, I define slovenly. Eventually, I’ll get around to looking and feeling more presentable. But I wonder whether I will feel it. Yesterday, as I was nearing home from my hospital visit, I noticed how brightly colored many of the trees were. And it struck me that even though I noticed their brilliance, they still seemed somewhat dull, as if their brightness and color was not enough. That’s how I feel this morning; even after I shower and shave, I won’t feel clean and fresh and ready for the day. But maybe I can change that dismal attitude if I force myself to think about all the things for which I must be grateful. Yes, I’ll attempt to force the issue and make today worth experiencing.

Visiting hours in the Intensive Care Unit (ICU) are 1 to 7 p.m. I was there just before visiting hours began, so I had to wait a few minutes before I was allowed to go upstairs to visit my wife’s bedside. I stayed until around 4:30, when I decided to leave so I could avoid driving into bright headlights after nightfall; it’s not that I can’t drive at night, I just prefer not to and it’s safer.

While I was there, I spoke with my wife a little and coaxed her to eat about three or four bites of the lunch that was sitting on her overbed table, untouched. A few bites of whipped potatoes, one bite of roast beef, and a bite of the apple crisp dessert was all she was willing to eat. The nurse said she had left her breakfast untouched, as well. Most of the time I was at her bedside, my wife’s eyes were closed and I suppose she was asleep most of my visit. She was awake when the nurses changed the dressing on the line in the vein on  her neck and when the two nurses suggested I leave while they bathed her and changed the sheets on her bed while she was in it.

The multiple diagnoses on admission, the nurse told me, were hypotension (extremely low blood pressure) and septic shock, which was brought on by a third issue, urinary tract infection (UTI). Dehydration, too, played into her discomfort and weakness. The UTI is, I think, her third experience with the malady since she was admitted to the hospital in mid-July. Septic shock can be deadly, so calling 911 to get her to the hospital was, in  hindsight, a very good thing. I take no credit for that; her doctor’s nurse sent me an email, telling me the doctor recommended my wife be taken to the ER for evaluation.

During the time I visited my wife yesterday, her voice was so weak I could barely hear her. Most of her words were requests that I give her water or iced tea; I held the glass up close to her and slipped a straw into her mouth so she could suck up some cool regenerative liquids. After her bath, she asked for more tea and some dessert (she chose angel food cake topped with fruit); she took only  a sip or two of the iced tea and a bite of the cake before refusing more and falling asleep again.

The nurse told me she would spend another night in ICU while she was being “weaned” of the IV medications that were keeping her blood pressure within healthy limits. Once her blood pressure stabilizes, he said, she could be moved to a regular floor. When she will be transferred there and how long she will be there remains to be seen. I took her cell phone to her, but she seems so weak it is unlikely she can pick it up to dial it; and it’s not within reach, thanks to a short charging cord, but she can ask for it to be handed to her, if she chooses.

Around 7:15 this morning, I’ll try to reach the ICU nurse responsible for my wife’s care to get an update on her condition. The nurses probably do not relish phone calls from relatives, but short visiting hours and incommunicado overnights are almost too much to bear without some form of feedback. I wish there were a less intrusive (to the nurses) way to get updates on condition.

I will return to the hospital, either the ICU or the regular floors, after I get word on when and where to go. In the interim, I will shower, shave, and make myself more presentable to the outside world.

I did not sleep well last night. The fact that my wife is in ICU kept invading my thoughts, interrupting my sleep. And, oddly enough, I was troubled all night, too, by the dilemma of how I will get her home when she is released. I need to have a sling under her, whether she is in a wheelchair or on a stretcher, so I can use the Hoyer lift to transfer her into bed. That may be a silly worry, but it was much on my mind last night and remains. This must be a common problem that hospital staff deals with all the time, right? Surely they will be able to tell me how to do that. It will not present a problem, right? Still, I worry.

And I worry even more about what the medical team learned overnight. I am relatively sure my wife must have been dehydrated; trying to get her to drink water has been a constant battle and I’m certain I did not do enough, especially given how quickly she went through fluids and so forth. And what caused her extremely low blood pressure? And what has caused her periodic hallucinations? A thousand questions and no definitive answers; not even educated guesses, at this point.

The appointment with my cardiologist, scheduled for tomorrow morning, will have to be postponed or cancelled. Tomorrow is the one day this month he will be in the Village, so I’ll have to reschedule for at least a month hence; that, or drive to Little Rock. I doubt I’ll want to do that; I do not want to spend a day away from my wife. It’s just an annual checkup, so nothing urgent. But it would have been nice to get it out of the way. And I have an appointment with my primary care doctor next week to have some skin growths burned off. I may delay that, too. I made the appointment under a set of assumptions about circumstances that are no longer valid.

These minor inconveniences should not even enter my mind, but they do. Perhaps I allow them to fill the empty spaces in my brain that otherwise would fill with much more unpleasant thoughts. I psychoanalyze myself with some regularity; I doubt my diagnoses are even remotely correct. Sometimes, I wish they were. Other times, I hope they aren’t.

Today begins the aftermath of an enormous flood of negativity and an ongoing tsunami of egotistical self-serving actions and lies. I will not let it worry me. Not today.

I hope my wife slept comfortably and soundly last night. I suspect, though, she was awakened regularly for routine medical matters. Perhaps she will be successfully treated for maladies that have caused her so much misery these last ten days. I fervently hope so.

For ten days and then some, my wife has been trying to recover her strength at home, after having been discharged from a rehab facility in which her strength ebbed during her two-month-plus stay. That struggle has not been easy. Today, there was a setback when her blood pressure fell to the point that visiting occupational and physical therapists could not get a reading. After I contacted my wife’s primary care doctor (her nurse, actually), I was advised to take my wife to the ER for evaluation. I called 911 and an ambulance took her to the hospital ER (because my wife is bedridden, I had no way to transport her). At the ER, they were able to measure her blood pressure. The upper number was 80 and below on every reading; the lower number was extremely low, as well. After a short while, a doctor told me she would probably be admitted. Later, another doctor told me she would be admitted into the ICU because her blood pressure was so low and, it appears, was not responding to normal interventions. So, I came home. I did not want to come home without my wife tonight. Although I do not know how I would have gotten her home if she had not been admitted; she needs transport in a wheelchair (I could have gone home and gotten it), which I cannot do in either of our vehicles. I guess I better figure that out before she is released. Dammit. This wasn’t supposed to happen.

Today, November 2, is my late sister’s birthday. She died on February 19, 2010. On one hand, it seems like a lifetime ago; on the other, like yesterday. On the day of her death, and a few times since, I posted the following words:

She fed people she didn’t know, she gave up her bed for people who needed to sleep, she battled the IRS and Social Security Administration for people who couldn’t do so on their own, but desperately needed an advocate. And they had that advocate in my sister. She was, in many ways, the Molly Ivins of our family; she gave people hell if they deserved it, especially when they had mistreated someone else…the underdog was her pet!

I will always miss her and remember her. She was a role model all human beings could learn from.

Sometimes, when things spring without warning from one’s long-buried subconscious, inexplicable biases become instantly transparent. So it was this morning as I glanced at a vase on the kitchen island. Almost all the flowers in the vase, full of carnations, remain attractive and alive after more than a week. The stem of one carnation, though, had given up. The flower, still pretty, hung upside down from the point at which the bent stem had failed to carry the load.

I should mention that, until many years into my adulthood, I had considered carnations rather unattractive. They struck me as weeds, dressed up in a failed attempt to look attractive. I never quite understood why I found the flowers visually offensive; for some reason I just thought they looked artificial and cheap.

Back to the vase full of attractive carnations, with the one flower dangling upside down in defeat. That vanquished flower triggered a memory from deep, deep in my childhood. It was a memory of leche quemada, a Mexican treat that (in my experience) uses Carnation Sweetened Condensed Milk. I loved the stuff, but I think I remember cans of the sweet milk looking worn and tired after being heated in boiling water during the process of making leche quemada. The woman who made the stuff was Petra, a Mexican housekeeper my parents engaged to look after me and clean house while my folks were away at work.

This took place in Brownsville, Texas, so I would have been five years old or younger (we moved away before I turned six). My mother was a schoolteacher and my father was lumber wholesaler, so they had to have someone look after me while they were away at work. Petra lived in Matamoros, I think, a city just across the Rio Grande from Brownsville. She crossed the border every day, I believe, to come care for me. And she made leche quemada as a sweet treat. I loved the stuff. For years afterword, I longed for Petra to come back and make it for me. But, as I mentioned, the cans of Carnation Sweetened Condensed Milk looked ragged and pretty shabby after Petra finished with them. I am relatively sure the image of the ragged carnation flower on the can is how I came to view the real flowers as unattractive, artificial imitations of “real” flowers. And that bias, I believe, is what made me find carnations unappealing for years and years afterward. In fact, I think it was when we lived in Dallas (during or after 1997, it would have been), that my wife’s purchase of vases full of carnations that I finally overcame my bias against them. Since then, I’ve come to appreciate their beauty and their tenacity; they last far longer than many other flowers one finds in the typical floral arrangement.

All of these recollections poured from my subconscious this morning before I put away the dishes from the dishwasher and before I made coffee. The speed of memory, often slow and torturous, can be blazingly fast on occasion. And now, I must remember to go to Walmart to buy trash bags and fruits and, if I can find it, low sugar butterscotch pudding. The pudding is for my wife, to aid in swallowing too damn many pills and to make that unpleasant process a little sweeter, a little more tolerable. While I’m there, I’ll try to buy a watermelon (very late for them, but my wife loves the flavor and I think Walmart must have a source for off-season watermelons), some blueberries and strawberries, and maybe a 3-way bulb for a lamp that is, for the moment, dark.

Off I go.

Time compresses into an invisible blur. Hours become single-digit minutes. Minutes become seconds. Seconds become fractional measures of experience; they are so brief one hundred thousand units equates to the measure of moments required for a single beat of a hummingbird’s wing. All of these hyper-compressed experiences exceed the ability of my brain to process them. A week has gone by in half the blink of an eye. Yet recollections of those hyper-condensed seven days are excruciatingly long; they take form at the speed of ice-cold molasses flowing down a one-degree slope.

In my mind, the realities and the recollections behave like atmospheric barometric pressure disturbances, one very high and one very low. Thick clouds emerge and crooked fingers of lightning form a web around my brain as the highs and lows dance together, spinning and swirling into tornadic chaos. Pandemonium washes over me like a tidal surge. Then, suddenly, calm envelopes me like a blanket, urging me to relax.  I feel the words, rather than hear them: “You do not have control of this. Your emotions contribute nothing, so release them.”

For a moment, the world is tranquil and I am, strangely, at peace. Suddenly, though, I feel as though an enormous hand has reached through my body and wrapped its fingers around my spine, pulling me backward. It yanks me back into the cyclone and unleashes wave upon wave of turbulent bedlam.

These cyclic experiences take place at velocities exceeding the speed of light, yet their memories replay in ultra slow motion. One week jammed with experiences more numerous than a lifetime of all the moments that preceded them. One week remembered as if every breath took a day and every heartbeat took an hour.

This diatribe does not constitute a complaint in any way. I mean it simply to capture what is happening in my brain. I count on the fingers of one hand, with one left over, how many times my wife has eaten dinner in the past week. I count on the fingers of one hand the number of times she has eaten lunch or breakfast. And she sleeps and sleeps and sleeps and sleeps. I am at a loss as to how to get her to eat more. She complains of gut pains and has signs of illness. Tomorrow, when the nurse comes again, I will ask her many questions; she will give me answers without sugar-coating them.

I have more help now. A helper checked her every three hours last night and did what had to be done when necessary. I slept in the same twin bed I’ve slept in for a week, but move away from the side of the hospital bed so the helper could get to my wife without disturbing me; except for turning on the light, which woke me up each time. I opted to spend the money for 24/7 help for two weeks while I explore options available to us.

I wonder whether the upcoming two week stretch will feel both compressed and extended? Weekends get in the way of exploration; people I want to talk to tend not to work on weekends. I can’t change that. My frustration does not good and has no external effect; it only throws a log onto an internal flame, which will turn me to ash if I let it. I will not. I will relax.

+++

I received a long, thoughtful, reply to an email I sent to new follower of my blog. I was curious about how she stumbled upon this blog. She explained and gave me a bit of her background, by way of explanation (I believe) for why she found some of my posts interesting. In her reply, I learned that we both have lived in or around Chicago and Houston, the latter perhaps overlapping a bit. Reading about her experiences allowed me to escape, for a time, and to imagine engaging in long conversations with her about philosophies and experiences and how embracing them molds us as we mature. Escape. I keep talking about escape. It’s not escape; it’s respite. There is a vast difference between the two.

+++

Last night’s all-night care worker gave me the luxury of watching two more episodes of Bordertown. I am utterly enamored with the series. I can imagine binge-watching the remainder of the series in an all-day and all-night Netflix marathon. I won’t do that, though. But I will continue to watch it, as I can, until I can return to Deadwind. I have not checked to see whether Netflix has fixed the problem that made it impossible for me to watch a subsequent episode, but even if not, I think I can watch on my computer. One way or the other, I will.

+++

My neck and shoulders are complaining bitterly about the abuse they are taking as I life turn my wife to get the Hoyer lift sling under her or to turn her from one side to the other. I may engage a masseuse, if I can find one practicing sufficient care to come to my home, but I doubt it. I just need to let the helpers do the bulk of the work; they are used to lifting and stretching, while I am not.

+++

I am amazed that it’s already almost 11:30. I thought when I got up this morning that I could write and enjoy a little solitude. The blur of time compression erased that thought without even acknowledging it. Tasks and duties and responsibilities began the moment I awakened. If I had not taken a shower and shaved I could have had another 30-40 minutes, but that’s not enough. Scrambling to find shards of free time for solitude and serenity is a useless, self-defeating exercise. I’ve written enough now, even though it’s much later than “usual.” What does “usual” mean, now?

Sources of energy and  inspiration—shafts of bright light piercing absolute darkness—emerge from unexpected places.  They may arise from comments uttered by a close friend who expresses his care or from words sent by someone known only by name and her written words. Darkness amplifies the experience of light. A thin beam of light in an utterly dark world is far brighter than a floodlight on a densely overcast afternoon. Metaphorically speaking, of course.

I wish I could see the future, if only to know whether I want to be there when it arrives. I might as well wish I could have lived during the Holocaust to know whether I would have survived it. The present should command the majority of our attention; not the future, nor the past. We must pay heed to lessons from the past, of course, and we must attempt to create circumstances conducive to a future we can enthusiastically embrace; but the bulk of our energy should be for and in the here and now. Regardless of the dimness of the past or the hazy image of the future we imagine, we should seek that pinpoint of light amid the unknown darkness in every instant.

I wonder whether—a month or a year or a decade from now—I will remember the message I was sending to myself when I wrote those two preceding paragraphs? I sometimes write messages to myself in cryptic codes that, later, make no sense. Usually, though, I can decipher what I meant. Others reading my words, thought, even freshly written words, often cannot. I would not expect them to read my thoughts, especially the ones I opt to keep locked in my head.

+++

Just one more episode of Bordertown last night; I went to bed early after checking on my wife at 8:30, knowing I would need to check on her again at 11:30, 2:30, and 5:30. I wanted to watch another episode, but I thought better of it. If I had stayed up later, I would have been approximately worthless throughout the night. The positive aspect of watching just one episode is the fact that I have more left to watch in the coming days and weeks. Too much television, even good television, probably is not good for one’s mental health. The tension and violence of Finnish police dramas might meld with the tension and unease of real life, producing a dangerous mix of tense self-injurious moodiness. Probably not. But possible. So, best to keep television viewing to a minimum. I do my best to justify decisions for which I have no real justifications.

+++

Yesterday’s telemedicine appointment with my wife’s primary care physician got off to a rocky start when the doctor attempted to connect on my wife’s cell phone, instead of mine. The previous afternoon, I told her nurse to have the doctor call my cell; the message did not get through. Despite the glitch, we connected an hour after the original appointment time. The doctor told us my wife’s congestive heart failure (a condition she has had since she was in her early twenties, if not before) is progressing, which the doctor believes is the cause of my wife’s weakness. There is no going back, the doctor said; it will not get better. The doctor said some of my wife’s other symptoms could be related to an intestinal infection; we may find out more with lab work early in the week. In the meantime, my wife’s diet should be relatively bland and relatively soft food. My wife is not eating much (not enough); I will have no trouble with the doctor’s orders. The planned meals from the “meal train” that friends have begun all should be fine, I think; unless my wife’s appetite improves, she won’t be eating much of what is delivered, but she will appreciate and enjoy what little she eats.

+++

When the sky began to brighten this morning, the southeastern horizon behind our house glowed with such beautiful red-orange hues that I had to stop for a moment and stare. The distinction between the sky and the earth was so crystal clear; glowing embers above a wrinkled purple and black terrestrial blanket, the hills in sharp contrast against the sky. Sometimes I catch myself holding my breath when I view such scenes, as if breathing will cause them to dissolve into a more mundane daylight vision.

+++

It is well past daylight now and time for me to prepare my wife’s morning pills. A helper will arrive in a quarter of an hour; I want to be ready to start my wife’s day properly.

The global chaos surrounding COVID-19, presidential elections, climate catastrophe, mass hysteria and psychoses, and all manner of other horrors fade when I am so focused on what is going on in my own house. The world around me becomes less distracting when every waking moment is focused on the events inside the walls of my house. The intensity of focus can be draining, but in some ways it is its own source of energy. At a certain point, though, I’ve discovered that I need to extract myself from the present. Yesterday, the day continued from overnight with the arrival of two people from the home care agency; the supervisor and the worker who was assigned to us for yesterday and today. After introductions, the supervisor left and the worker helped continue the work I had continued from the day before and that night. Then, my wife’s sister arrived with watermelon she has prepared for us as a treat. Later, a nurse came to take vitals, change wound dressing, and offer advice; she was superb and I hope she continues to return to care for my wife. Later, a speech therapist came to evaluate my wife’s speech, swallowing, and various other aspects within her professional purview; she, too, was exceptional (and I learned that she lives just up the street from us). Finally, a home care worker from the same company arrived to give my wife a sponge bath, change linens, and otherwise refresh my wife’s environment. Later still, after several attempts to entice my wife to eat more and drink more water, the home care agency worker and I put my wife to bed and the worker left. That’s when I extracted myself from the present.

I turned on Netflix and watched a couple of episodes of a Finnish crime drama called Bordertown. Watching it took me away from the present and enabled me to get wrapped up in the drama and action of an extraordinarily well-conceived (if given to stretch believability a bit) and flawlessly-executed television series. It’s another one of those series I am certain I will be sorry to see end. Fortunately, though, it is 31 episodes long, so I have plenty more to watch. Unfortunately, I cannot binge-watch it the way I’ve been watching so many other series of late. There’s just too much need for my attention to the real world inside the walls of my house. But at least Bordertown is there for me when I need to and have time for escape.

I haven’t gotten back to Deadwind, another Finnish crime drama series that Netflix mysteriously refused to allow me to continue watching after I watched ten episodes of the first season (there are two seasons); I’ll have to try again soon so I don’t lose memory of what I’ve watched so far.

My television-watching habits run in waves. First, I was enamored of Norwegian series. Then, Danish. Now, Finnish. (There were several others interspersed between them, but I’m talking generalities, here.) It’s odd how I seem to have abandoned most American-made series. But it’s not really odd; American series just don’t have that noir quality that is so attractive to me. The fact that I’m attracted to noir series may be the oddity.

Last night was not as taxing as previous nights, in that all I had to do was check on my wife every three hours. She rebuffed my efforts to turn her. I should have insisted, but she seemed to be so perfectly comfortable, I did not want to disturb her. Yet I should have; the intent is to turn her to avoid bed sores. I am exploring a mattress pad, an alternate pressure mattress pad, that supposedly reduces pressure points and thus reduces the need for frequent turnings. That will ease my burden and help her ensure a more restful sleep, I hope. We shall see.

It’s time for me so shower so I can face the day more refreshed and ready than I am at the moment. My motley beard needs to be shaved, my hair needs combing, and my teeth need brushing. But, first, I finish the coffee in my cup. Then, back to the real world.

Only four and a half days have passed since my wife returned home from her very long stint in the hospital (two stays) and rehabilitation facilities (two facilities). While I do not doubt for a minute the value of her time in the hospital, I think the rehabilitation facilities were worse than wastes of time. Perhaps they help many people; they did not help my wife. They greatly exacerbated her condition. Instead of seeking ways of counteracting the effects of long-term COVID-19-forced solitude, they simply isolated her and said, in effect, “we’re just following the rules; we have no responsibility for addressing the impact of what amounts to solitary confinement.” Am I bitter? You bet I am. I am more than bitter. I am enraged that facilities ostensibly dedicated to the health and well-being of people, particularly elderly people, simply shrug their shoulders and say “there’s nothing we can do.” What they lack in creativity is made up for in their abundance of incompetence, in my view.

Despite my best intentions and my belief that I can do what needs to be done, I am getting tired. It’s physical tiredness, brought on by rising every three hours during the night (a nurse told me it should be every two hours, but I just cannot do it) to monitor her and rotate her position, causing strained neck and shoulder muscles. I have no complaints about doing it, yet I know I can’t keep it up for a long time because I will become useless to my wife if I do. So, I have decided to engage a company to provide 24/7 care for at least two weeks; the company does not yet know when it can start on that schedule, but when the schedule starts, I will devote my full time to exploring options. In the interim, I will find ways to improve my wife’s comfort and to lighten my load so I can, perhaps, continue caring for her for a much longer time. Ideally, I can help her with her physical therapy exercises to the extent that she can become at least modestly independent. Though I am hopeful, I am not confident that can happen. But I will do everything I can to bring it about.

Fortunately, many people have stepped forward to offer help in the way of shopping, meal preparation, handling errands, and the like. I am extremely grateful for those people; with their assistance, my hope may well be fulfilled.

Thus far, my wife has been eating very, very little. She refuses much food, saying she gets full very quickly or that her stomach is upset. That worries me. That worry, among others, will be the subject of a conversation I will have with a nurse who will come to the house at noon today. She also has been reluctant to do her physical therapy exercises; she says she is too tired and simply wants to sleep. That, too, worries me. I wonder whether her enormous number of prescription medications might contribute to both her lack of appetite and her lethargy.

It occurs to me that my words here may seem like I am wallowing in self-pity. I am not. I simply recognize my limitations in filling my wife’s caregiving needs. That is not self-pity; it is self-knowledge. The fact that I do not have more to give bothers me, but that’s simply a fact of life. I will do everything I can, and then some, for as long as I can. I hope the respite provided by 24/7 care will enable me to develop a strategy that will lead to a positive long-term result.

Time to prepare the morning medicines.